Crustal Electrical Conductivity Structure of Southern Tibet from Magnetotelluric Survey

INTRODUCTIONAsatypicalintercontinent collisionarea ,Tibetanplateauisapresentlypopularregionnoticedbygeoscientistsallovertheworld ,sinceitisanidealandnaturallabforthestudyofthegeologicalevolutionoftheinnerlandmountain creatingzoneandoftheprocessofthecrust mantledeepdy namicsaswellasoftheinteractionbetweenthesurfaceandthecrustmovement.ThestudyoftheTibetanplateauevolutionisimportantnotonlyinsolvingsometheoreticalproblemsaboutcontinentaldynamicsandglobalchangesingeosciences ;butalsoinexplorin…     

A residual force finite element approach to soil–structure interaction analysis

An iterative process based upon a hybrid ‘residual force’ method is presented for solving elasto–plastic soil–structure interaction problems. In this approach the soil and the structure are treated as separate bodies and related only by compatibility of displacements and equilibrium of forces at the soil–structure interface. This scheme enables a significant improvement in numerical stability and rate of convergence over the conventional initial stress method. It is also shown that various interface conditions such as shear failure, slip and breakaway, and frictional and dilatant behaviour can be readily accounted for. Some practical aspects associated with the proposed scheme are emphasized for a number of numerical examples.     

Consolidation around a point heat source

When a heat source such as a canister of radioactive waste is buried in a saturated soil the temperature changes that occur will cause the pore water to expand a greater amount than the voids of the soil. The temperature change will thus usually be accompanied by an increase in pore pressure. If the soil is sufficiently permeable these pore pressures will dissipate. This paper develops an analytic solution for the fundamental problem of a point heat source buried deep in a saturated soil.     

Consolidation of axi-symmetric bodies subjected to non axi-symmetric loading

In many cases the analysis of the consolidation of axi-symmetric bodies subjected to non axi-symmetric loading may be carried out without recourse to a full three-dimensional treatment. Advantage may be taken of the axi-symmetric nature of the body and field quantities such as displacement and pore pressure can be given a Fourier representation. The problem is then reduced from one in three spatial dimensions (r, θ, z) and the time domain to one in two spatial dimensions (r, z) and the time domain.     

Predicting river width,depth and velocity at ungauged sites in England and Wales using multilevel models

Using a dataset of gauged river discharges taken from sites in England and Wales, linear multilevel models (also known as mixed effects models) were applied to quantify the variability in discharge and the discharge‐hydraulic geometry relationships across three nested spatial scales. A jackknifing procedure was used to test the ability of the multilevel models to predict hydraulic geometry, and therefore width, mean depth and mean velocity, at ungauged stations. These models provide a framework for making predictions of hydraulic geometry parameters, with associated levels of uncertainty, using different levels of data availability. Results indicate that as one travels downstream along a river there is greater variability in hydraulic geometry than is the case between rivers of similar sizes. This indicates that hydraulic geometry (and therefore hydrology) is driven by catchment area, to a greater extent than by natural geomorphological variations in the streamwise direction at the mesoscale, but these geomorphological variations can still have a major impact on channel structure. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Secular changes in Earth’s shape and surface mass loading derived from combinations of reprocessed global GPS networks

The changing distribution of surface mass (oceans, atmospheric pressure, continental water storage, groundwater, lakes, snow and ice) causes detectable changes in the shape of the solid Earth, on time scales ranging from hours to millennia. Transient changes in the Earth’s shape can, regardless of cause, be readily separated from steady secular variation in surface mass loading, but other secular changes due to plate tectonics and glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) cannot. We estimate secular station velocities from almost 11 years of high quality combined GPS position solutions (GPS weeks 1,000–1,570) submitted as part of the first international global navigation satellite system service reprocessing campaign. Individual station velocities are estimated as a linear fit, paying careful attention to outliers and offsets. We remove a suite of a priori GIA models, each with an associated set of plate tectonic Euler vectors estimated by us; the latter are shown to be insensitive to the a priori GIA model. From the coordinate time series residuals after removing the GIA models and corresponding plate tectonic velocities, we use mass-conserving continental basis functions to estimate surface mass loading including the secular term. The different GIA models lead to significant differences in the estimates of loading in selected regions. Although our loading estimates are broadly comparable with independent estimates from other satellite missions, their range highlights the need for better, more robust GIA models that incorporate 3D Earth structure and accurately represent 3D surface displacements.     

Methods for the numerical solution of the equations of viscoelasticity

In this paper a finite element formulation for a linear viscoelastic ageing material is developed. It is shown that these equations can be solved in the from of an eigenvalue expansion thus reducing the problem to the solution of a set of Volterra Integral equations. An alternative method of solution based on expansion in terms of an operator related to Poisson's ratio is also developed and this solution method is found to significantly reduce the computational effort necessary in the solution of aproblem.     

Numerical analysis of rafts on visco-elastic media using eigenvector expansions

Problems of a raft on a visco-elastic continuum may be converted to equivalent elastic problems by means of a Laplace transformation. In this paper a numerical solution of the equivalent problem is obtained by finite element or other techniques. This solution is converted into the form of an eigenvector expansion and then transformed into a numerical solution to the original problem by inverting the Laplace transform. This form of solution has the advantage of applying to any visco-elastic model, and of requiring little additional computation as a result of changing the visco-elastic model, the relative raft-soil stiffness or the load pattern. The application of the method is illustrated by results for circular rafts, strip footings of finite length and rectangular rafts, and particular attention is paid to a realistic soil creep function which is asymptotic to a linear function of log time.     

The behaviour of an elastic non-homogeneous half-space. Part II–circular and strip footings

Solutions developed in the first part of this paper (i.e. describing the response of a non-homogeneous half-space subjected to surface point and line loads) are used in this part to obtain solutions for a variety of surface loadings. Consideration is given to a distributed load acting over a circular area or strip and a rigid disk or strip subjected to applied normal load and moment. It is established that the profiles of surface settlement due to uniformly distributed loads acting over a strip or circular area are strongly dependent on the degree of non-homogeneity. This dependency is reduced when the footing is rigid. When α = 1 the moduli variation is identical to the Gibson soil and the equivalence with the Winkler soil model is established.     

The elastic response of multiple underream anchors

A technique is developed for the analysis of multiple underream anchor systems resting in an elastic soil. This technique may be used to consider anchor systems involving arbitrary anchor inclination and depth beneath the soil surface, as well as arbitrary number, shape, size and spacing of underreams. The approach is largely analytical in nature and involves only a fraction of the computation required for a finite element analysis. Consideration is given to the effects of anchor depth and inclination to the soil surface, and the spacing and number of underreams upon the elastic response of anchor systems. On the basis of the result from this study, a simple, approximate method for estimating the response of multiple underream anchors is proposed. This approach involves the use of several interaction charts, which are presented in the paper, and can be used as a hand method for estimating the load–displacement behaviour of quite general anchor systems to sufficient accuracy for most practical purposes. The use of the approximate approach is illustrated by an example.